One Damn Thing After Another (5 page)

Sure, bastardly cops. Everybody knew, Arlette knew. Pack of fascists. This, though, was just a little simple-minded. A bad performance, but the result of their exasperation at these weekend-cottage break-ins. There were too many of them. The police had a lot of work and trouble, and when they caught the authors, the effing tribunal let them go again. This police viewpoint was rather simplistic also, but equally it was understandable. If the population and the police are both boiling with frustration (said Arthur Davidson) and a government riddled with hypocrisy does nothing, you are going to have trouble on both sides. Explaining this to Madame Solange Bartholdi would be a lame performance, and useless. Telling her, abruptly, that Madame van der Valk did not wish to get involved in police matters was no help either. Evasiveness, no denying it, prompted her to point out that there were aspects of all this not as yet touched upon. What had happened to the man who shot the boy?

This was the heart of it. Honest with everyone, and herself, Solange could not accept this. It had been a fearful blow that her boy had been carried along in a set that thought it funny to break into weekend houses (boredom more than vengeance,
but let that pass). The boy had paid with his life, but she was not vindictive. The police were swine. These were facts of life. But that man, who had killed her son for no more than a broken shutter. Wasn't that a crime? He had got clean away with it.

The gendarmerie had arrested him. He'd been held for thirty-six hours. The judge of instruction had released him. No, not on bail. Unconditional. She'd found out. Legitimate defence had been claimed and accepted. No prosecution, let alone a trial. The automatic formal charge brought, of manslaughter, had simply been dropped.

Arlette frowned.

“Not quite good enough, that.”

“I said I'd get that fellow. But what can I do? I went down and I said, I said I lay a charge against that man, for killing my son. They said you can't, not a criminal charge you can't, that's been dropped, they said. No going back on that. You can lay a civil charge for damages they said, you'll have to get a lawyer. I went to one. He hemmed a lot, said yes, that's possible, I can do that, I have to have five thousand francs as a guarantee against costs, for taking it up. Five thousand francs! He might as well have asked me for the moon.”

“You can get legal aid.”

“Those pro deo chaps,” Frenchly and shrewdly, “their heart's not in it. Nothing for nothing and not much for sixpence. I thought – I thought I'd try and see if you could help me.”

“It's what I'm here for. I'll ask you fifty, for the hour. Another hundred and fifty for whatever I can do, provisional. There might not be an awful lot I can do. Police business I can't touch; I haven't the right. Legal – I'm not qualified and can't infringe on those who are. I can find out exactly what happened, and if anything has been concealed or kept back. I can find you an advocate, and a good one, who'll advise you and without it costing you a fifth of that extortionate sum you quoted. That, you see, was to get rid of you, because this is a troublesome affair. For now – let me work on it and get in touch with you. It'll take me a day or two. Is that any good?”

“It sure to God is,” said Madame Bartholdi.

Arlette made a face, a lot less sanguine than her words. She knew the snag that made Johnny Sly ask five thousand. Nobody was anxious to plead against a legitimate-defence claim, not without some element giving leverage. The bourgeois feeling, so widespread as to be near universal, was that violence, in defence of property, was quite permissible. What! One is terrorized systematically. Bands of hooligans roam about unimpeded, and not a cop in sight. A man – one of us – shoots one? Best of luck, say we all. Teach the ruffians they can't always get away with it.

One such bandit, who'd been booby-trapped breaking in, even had the infernal cheek to bring a civil suit. Unlawful injuries, so please you. Think of it! A damned left-wing pink of an advocate had pleaded that. Judges, with no more backbone nowadays than a pack of shrinking pansies, had retained a few scraps of sense, just barely enough to throw this preposterous nonsense out of court.

Cultivate the bourgeois, said Arthur nastily, and that's what you get as dinner-table conversation: Bring Back The Cat. Poor old France hasn't got a cat. Never mind; a good fifteen-year-stretch at hard labour: Bring Back Devil's Island. An offence against property will always be punished far more heavily than an offence against the person.

Doing something for Madame Bartholdi isn't going to be easy, thought Arlette unhappily. It rather looks, my girl, as though you've another failure on your hands.

A restless impulse sent Arlette into the kitchen, where the cleaning woman was, as usual, placidly drinking coffee. One or two Spanish platitudes were exchanged, and she worked a while
on the midday meal. Another jerky caprice – she was trying to think, found it difficult, and was, as she realized, putting it off – sent her feet in the direction of the livingroom, where she found a mess of Arthur's. The cleaning woman, strictly forbidden to touch ‘work', had dusted pointedly around an island of toast-crumbs, tobacco-flakes and a dirty piece of paper pinned down by the marmalade pot. Arlette left this disgusting object-lesson in male piggery where it was, but read the paper.

‘Mental Intoxication … An everyday example is modishness or fashion. A man and I were studying together a new car, of unparalleled hideousness in design & colour, & cf. Lurie's appellation “The Jar of Peanut Butter”. Knowing nothing, & caring less about its engineering capacities, I remarked mildly that its vile aspect sufficed to condemn. The man looked at me in total consternation and said, “But it's this year's model!” Nothing I could say shook his conviction that this was a criterion of excellence.'

For this one could forgive Arthur's rooted refusal to keep his beastly breakfast on the kitchen table.

She could not remember whether she had left the phone on direct ring or on record, and went back to her workroom to find out. It was on record, meaning a taped instruction to leave a message, and there was a message on the tape; a male voice, quiet and agreeably unaggressive, saying, ‘Sergeant Subleyras, Crime Squad, don't ring me, I'll ring again in an hour's time' and wasted no further time. More or less without thinking, Arlette switched the phone to direct and it rang almost at once, and the same voice, still wasting no time, said, “Good morning, Madame, Subleyras, Urban Police. Have you any free time this morning?”

“What's it about?” searching her mind for any possible recent transgressions: despite experience, she still felt guilty when the police called.

“I'd rather not discuss it on the phone: I'd prefer a confidential interview.” Surprise. Try to be businesslike. Her watch said nine forty-eight; heavens, it's still early.

“Now, if you like. Ten o'clock?”

“That'll do nicely,” with no beating about the bush at all.
“Be with you in a few minutes.” Tolerably startled, she hung up and wondered what on earth the cops … surely Madame Bartholdi hadn't … no, impossible. Well, she'd see shortly. And hear. Time for a pee and repair one's lipstick. The ring at the doorbell was brisk but not intimidating, and she was ready with the right degree of smile.

“Please come in.” A rapid enveloping look round the little ‘waitingroom', part of the entrance corridor really, partitioned off and pine-panelled, hung with flower prints in clean watercolour. He said nothing but “Subleyras”, holding his hand out.

“Arlette Davidson. Van der Valk was my former name which I use professionally.”

“I know.”

“Well, then – sit down, do – where have I gone off the path of virtue?”

“Nowhere to my knowledge. In fact, there's nothing professional about this call. My profession, that is.” And for the first time he hesitated, as though searching for words. “I rehearsed this,” he said smiling, “but not, it seems, very well.” The Strasbourg police force mostly follows the pattern of the Strasbourgeois; thick and short in morphology, running rapidly to flesh through the addiction to beer, tomato sauce, noodles and pork sausage; short, likewise, and thick in manner, voice and lifestyle. This man was not very tall and solidly boned, ribbed up with muscle; a broad face and plenty of jaw, but there was all the difference in the world. He was finely proportioned and amazingly light on his feet.

“I've had nothing to do with you but over this last year, one way or another, I've heard quite a lot about you.” For a professional, and a cop at that, and a harmonious, assured man, he was ill at ease. He took a cigarette to give himself a countenance. “I announced myself with a rank – force of habit – but I'm off duty and this is in fact unofficial; personal if you will.” The only thing that really said ‘Police' was the steady unwinking gaze. Cops and children stare: every sociologist has noticed it, and they weren't the first. The eyes took a quick flick, from one side to the other of Arlette's table. She was still totally in the dark, but decided to help him.

“You're wondering just how confidential this is? If I couldn't respect secrecy, I wouldn't be here; I wouldn't have lasted a week. I give some of my files to my husband for study, but with all personal data effaced, and everything withheld at request. There is a tape-recorder, but it's not on. I don't believe in tricks, and use none. Your own experience will have to be the judge.” He looked to be about thirty-five. A rugby player, Piet would have said, a number seven, a wing forward with fast reactions. The face a woman, and a man too, would call handsome, but had taken other people's shoulders head-on a few times. A few scars; the nose unbroken, but the front upper teeth were false.

“You're right, a cop is going to be suspicious, he can't help it. I made up my mind I wouldn't do it that way. It would have been easy to come with a phony story, try you out, see how you reacted. That would be a cop method. But it would take away the whole point. It's true though – I get this far and I'm stalled. I don't like what I'm going to say: it's contrary to too many of my instincts.”

“What I generally do,” said Arlette, opening her day book and picking up a pen, “is get the background first. The personal data mentioned. If you'd rather not, we'll leave it at that. Or you can think it over and come again if you decide to. Either way, the story – whatever it is – can wait: there's no hurry for it.” For it was another dirty story, that much was plain, and for a cop to come to her with it meant it must be something they didn't want to touch, and even if the whole damn police department was ready to cover up for her, she still wouldn't want to know, but she couldn't refuse to listen.

“Subleyras, Charles, and generally called Charley. Not born hereabouts – bit further south.”

“That's right, there's just a touch of the accent. I have it myself.”

“Nîmes; It's of no importance. Thirty-three years old. Married. Three little girls. And that's the whole point really.”

“Ah. I begin to get a glimmer. This really is a personal thing. Sorry – go on.”

“Profession, cop. Never had any other. Not an officer – no baccalaureate.”

“Can you give me your definition of the word ‘profession'?”

“For me, Madame, it's something one works at professionally, meaning you put your back into it and your brains: if the job isn't well done, it isn't professional.”

“Revealing answer.” Subleyras had a grin; tight without being pinched, crooked without being false. Not Sunny Jim, thank God, but far from a cold fish. He lit a cigarette from the butt of the last and shook one loose for her.

“I didn't come here to fence with you,” he said. “There isn't any story. The background is the story. I've done this job for fifteen years. Well, or less well, but professionally. I've come to a point where I'm no longer able, or allowed maybe, to do this work the way I see it. I'm not talking about justice. There's more rough than smooth to this job and that's a fact. I accept that – if you don't, you don't last one year, let alone ten. I've no fancy philosophies; don't pretend to be an educated man. I'm talking about common sense.”

“I don't have anything written on the door,” said Arlette, choosing her words slowly. “Those adverts I put in the paper say Counsel. Are you asking my advice, or my opinion? Have you really made your own mind up, but you're sticking a bit over the decision, and perhaps you're looking for something to push you into it? I wouldn't have the nerve, you know, to go advising a man like you what he should do with his life.”

“All right,” he said placidly. “I'll say only that I haven't altogether made my mind up, and all the light I can get, I can use.”

“So you come to a perfect stranger,” said Arlette, “to push the pendulum one way or the other.”

“I can go on splitting hairs. When you talk about common sense – give me a concrete example.”

He threw away the cigarette, crossed his arms and looked at Arlette.

“One that seems unimportant, but – illustrates?”

“Symptomatic?”

“Right. I'm off duty, near midnight, the ring boulevard,
couple of hundred metres past the station, not many people about. I'm in plain clothes, my own car, alone, at a red light. I see a girl walking – not loitering. A few paces behind her, a black man. I'm not sure I recognize him – not much light – but I don't care for the look of him. Cop instinct, if you like. Sidling up on her. I stop the car, cross the street, show my card, ask for his papers. He gives me lip in a loud voice, the girl stops and turns round, asks what I think I'm doing, pretty aggressive. I say I don't like the way he's marking her steps. He goes on backchatting, she calls me a fucking fascist. I'm a wee bit irritated, I pin him and say Up against the wall, boy.”